What Is the Sky?

The Malawi government impressed all school teachers to serve as the work force for its first census in 1966. I was sent to Mwanza on Malawi’s western border with Mozambique and stayed at the Mwanza Inn, a white stucco colonial building with a wrap-around porch. The grounds were planted with papaya, banana, orange and lemon trees, jacaranda and poinsettias. Every day for breakfast I had orange juice and papaya with lemon juice, fresh from the trees. The new road to Salisbury, Rhodesia, had passed the inn by, so there were few guests. I was the only white person for miles. Little children shrank in fear at the sight of me.

To use the hours when I was not working on the census, which were many, I employed a tutor, the gardener of the inn, Frank. Learning a language as an adult was humiliating. I became a toddler again, trying to express the basics of everyday life to an uncomprehending world.

One day Frank and I were sitting on the porch. It was a beautiful Malawi day—clear, warm, blue sky and fluffy clouds, the fruiting trees. The bare stone mountains stuck out as aliens, from the gentle slopes of the farmland.

I asked Frank what the ChiNyanja word for sky was.
Frank said, “Pa wamba ili blui.” (Up there is blue.)
I said, “No, Flanki, blui is an English word.” (In ChiNyanja “l” and “r” are interchangeable, and words end with a vowel.)
Frank said, “Pa wamba ili mitambo.” (Up there are clouds.)
“No, Flanki, not the white things.”
“Apo ili mitengo.” (There are trees.)
“No, Flanki, between the trees and the clouds, what do you call that?”

Frank looked dismayed and did not answer.

When the work in Mwanza was done, Frank gave me a going-away present, a live chicken in a hand-made cage of eucalyptus strips tied with vines.

After my return to the U.S., I asked the same question of a Rhodesian whose native language was ChiShona and who also spoke ChiNyanja (Africans are polyglots). He was a London School of Economics-trained economist with the World Bank. He thought for a good while and got a puzzled look on his face. He said there was none.

After some reflection it occurred to me that “sky” is not a very precise word. In the daytime the sky is blue because the atmosphere scatters the sun’s light. At night it is the black dome of the stars pa mwamba.